If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Welcome to Mac-Forums! Join us to comment and to customize your site experience! Members have access to different forum appearance options, and many more functions.

Does anyone know of a good data recovery program that can be used on a MacBook Pro that is no longer bootable? A program such as Spinrite for Windows where I can boot off the disc and have it attempt to recover some data?

I have tried Data Rescue II but, I am unable to make a bootable disc of it.

Make your Mac boot into target disk mode (press T while booting). Then connect it to another mac via a firewire cable. It should mount on the desktop as a separate drive. That should solve your problem.

What is the exact problem you are having? Because you should be able to do as louishen suggested. Then check to see if your disk is okay using disk utility. If your disk is okay then you have several things you can do. You can do what goobimama suggested to get your data off of your disk. You can do and achive and install. In order to restore your system to working order.

Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass, It's about learning to dance in the rain!

Well the limitation here is the HFS format. For instance, if you have MacDrive installed on a PC, you can very well plug your mac into a PC and browse the contents. Also, with Target disk mode, you can actually boot of Mac1 by using Mac2's hardware... very nifty for troubleshooting.

I dont have a problem, its just I would like to now. For Windows there is many bootable CD's to recover data and I think Mac should have one as well.

You should have to own two Macs in order to recover data in my opinion.

I have already done both of the suggested ideas and they work fine, but I am a computer technician and customers don't always have their OS cd's or I don't always have another Mac on hand

There are several third party tools that do what you're inquiring about. In particular, DiskWarrior is one that I've seen highly recommended. I'm also aware of Tech Tool Pro, but have not seen/used it.

Liquid and computers don't mix. It might seem simple, but we see an incredible amount of people post here about spills. Keep drinks and other liquids away from your expensive electronics!